WoW:Lua editors

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While any text editor can edit Lua files, many contain additional Lua specific features. See also UI FAQ/AddOn Author Resources.

Free

Free editors

WoW IDEs

WoW specific IDEs, editors, or modifications.

• AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft - Complete and fully-featured standalone IDE for WoW AddOn creation, based on Visual Studio.
  • AddOn Studio 2022 for World of Warcraft - Based on VS 2022 and up-to-date for WoW
  • AddOn Studio 2015 for World of Warcraft - Based on VS 2015 and up-to-date for WoW
  • AddOn Studio 2010 for World of Warcraft - Based on VS 2010 and up-to-date for WoW

• WoW Bundle - WoW AddOn extension for VS Code (see below), with Lua textmate grammar and WoW API awareness, .toc file grammar, and colorization for both .lua source and .toc files

• WoW UI Designer - (may no longer work) Complete standalone IDE for Lua and XML UI files, including intellisense for many WoW API functions

General IDEs

Integrated development environments with support for project or folder based development.

• Eclipse - Eclipse cross-platform Java based IDE for Windows. See Eclipse.
  • The Lua Development Tools plugin. For Windows, Mac OS X and other platforms. The LDT includes syntax coloring, error markers, code snippets, code navigation, and a debugger.
  • The Lua Eclipse Lua plug-in.

• IntelliJ IDEA - IntelliJ cross-platform IDE with the Lua plugin. Support for completions, API documentation, code formatting and more.

• LuaEdit - Professional style open-source Lua IDE

• ZeroBrane Studio - Lightweight Lua IDE with code completion, syntax highlighting, remote debugger, code analyzer, and live coding

• VSCode - Microsoft's open source Visual Studio Code IDE, based on Chrome and Node.js, with various plugins for Lua and XML

• Visual Studio - Microsoft's full-featured free IDE, with the Visual Studio Community Edition. Supports Lua syntax highlighting through built-in textmate, and native extensive XML editor with XSD support for WoW XML syntax. See Using Visual Studio for WoW AddOn-Development

Stand-alone editors

Single-file centric or stand-alone editors.

• PSPad - Syntax highlighting for Lua and XML files programmer's editor

• Komodo Edit - Open source built on top of Mozilla and Scintilla; with the extensibility of Firefox, and the syntax highlighting engine from SciTE.

• LuaIDE - IDE for Lua

• SciTE (Open Source) - Extensible open source editor. There are three pre-packaged versions for WoW development with Lua and XML syntax highlighting:
  • SciTE-WoWUI at wowinterface.com
  • WoW SciTe at wowguru.com
  • SciTe-Ru at code.google.com - Version with WoW API 3.0 syntax highlighting and calltips

• Notepad++ - Open source programmer's editor with support for Lua and XML

• Proton German freeware editor, unfortunately without UTF-8 support. Has XML syntax highlighting, and a plugin for Lua

• Emacs - Extensible, customizable cross-platform open source text editor. Built-in documentation and new user tutorial. Use lua-mode to get syntax highlighting for Lua files

• gVIM - Powerful cross-platform open source editor. Supports syntax highlighting for Lua and XML, as well as automatic code formatting

• TextWrangler - Free general purpose text/code editor with Lua and XML syntax highlighting

• Eddie - Free programmer's editor Mac OS X. Includes Lua syntax coloring and function popup

• Crimson Editor - Free professional Windows code editor, comes with Lua and XML syntax highlighting, along with many other file types
  • WoWLua CE - A Crimson Editor Specification for color coding World of Warcraft API, Widget, and Event keywords

• B:Lua - Under development open source editor and will, in time, hopefully provide a useful IDE for WoW Lua script development. See B:Lua.

• Programmer's Notepad - Light-weight notepad that adds syntax coloring with Lua support

• luaTopping (Under Development) luaTopping is a NetBeans plugin that adds WoW Addon "Project" support to the NetBeans IDE. Features include common addon file templates and deploy action to WoW folder. Accompanying luaSupport module provides Lua language support (syntax highlighting and grammar verification). Desired features include code competition, WoW API hints/help, among others.

Trial

Trial software

• DForD LuaCoding - Full graphical Lua IDE similar to Visual Studio. Supports syntax highlighting, symbol browsing/searching, auto-completion, code snippet, debugging, building and more. Supported by a fully Lua script written plugin framework

• QDE - Quotix Development Environment for Lua. Supports project management, autocomplete functionality, a multi-document interface, and debugging. Doesn't include a debug mode to test scripts with.

• Zeus for Windows - IDE with Lua syntax highlighting, code folding, project management, integrated version control. Fully scriptable using Lua

• TextPad - Available Lua syntax file available as an addon, provides syntax highlighting

• Edit+ - Available syntax file available as an addon provides syntax highlighting. 30 days trial. Nag window remains on startup if not registered.

• EmEditor - Text editor which won "Best Application" in the 2008 Shareware Industry Awards. Supports auto-completion for all file types, and Ctags. The list of syntax files available shows Lua 5.1 is available

• EditPad Pro - Enhanced notepad replacement with great Regex support. Lua syntax highlight and code navigation with a Lua add-on. 30-day evaluation of EditPad Pro, or EditPad Lite free for non-commercial use. Available for Windows and Linux.

• UltraEdit - Comprehensive programmer's text editor with coloration, code folding, auto-indentation, code projects. 30 day trial. Syntax definitions for WoW Lua and XML are maintained as a 'UltraEdit WoW wordfile.txt' or a new complete lua.txt including WoW, WotLK, Ace2 & Ace3 API functions and XML.

• SubEthaEdit - Collaborative text editor with Lua syntax highlighting. For Mac OS X.

• Sublime Text - Windows text editor with inbuilt Lua syntax highlighting

• ScriptDev - ScriptDev is a powerful script language IDE, with support for popular script languages

Commercial

Non-free editors

• BBEdit 8.7 - Now supports, and has syntax-directed text coloring, for Lua.

• Decoda- Lua IDE and graphical debugger with syntax highlighting, source code control (SCC) support, etc. Non-commercial licensing also available.

• Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 - Will open and edit LUA files in code view

• E-TextEditor - Windows editor with support for TextMate bundles and themes. With the Lua Bundle for syntax highlighting. Use How To Get More Bundles for more information on installing TextMate bundles in E-TextEditor.

• Lua Glider IDE - Commercial IDE for Windows and Mac OSX featuring one click debugging, profiling, class aware code completion, declaration/occurrences finder, semantic highlighting and more

• iLuaBox - iLuaBox is an app for iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, and iPad) that provides an intuitive environment to learn, write, and run scripts written in the Lua Programming Language. Not a stripped-down version of Lua, but a full-featured implementation optimized for iOS 4.2. iLuaBox is a universal application that runs on any iOS 4.2 compatible device.

• Smultron - Editor for the Mac. $4.99 on Mac App Store. Three versions available: Smultron (for 10.6 "Snow Leopard"), Smultron 4 (for 10.7 "Lion"), and Smultron 5 (for 10.8 "Mountain Lion"). Has LUA syntax coloring.

• Sublime Text Editor - Programmable cross-platform text editor that offers syntax highlighting for multiple languages. It features several time saving shortcuts and is highly customizable.

• TextMate - Mac OS X editor. With the Lua Bundle for syntax highlighting. See bundles manual for more information on installing TextMate bundles

• Visual Studio - Professional and higher editions of Microsoft's full-featured free IDE. Supports Lua syntax highlighting through built-in textmate, and native extensive XML editor with XSD support for WoW XML syntax, with other advanced features. See Using Visual Studio for WoW AddOn-Development

External links

• Lua Addons at lua-users.org - Great resource for more Lua IDEs and other Lua tools